Page 249 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

CLOUD BASED PATIENT PRIORITIZATION AS SERVICE IN PUBLIC HEALTH CARE

1
1
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3
1
A. Bagula , C. Lubamba , M. Mandava , H. Bagula , M. Zennaro , E. Pietrosemoli 3
1
ISAT Laboratory, Computer Science Department, University of The Western Cape (UWC),
Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa.
Email: abagula@uwc.ac.za
2
Department of Public Health, School of Medecine, University of Cape Town,
Cape Town, South Africa.
Email: BGLHER002@myuct.ac.za
3 T/ICT4D Laboratory, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics,
Via Beirut 7, 34151 Trieste, Italy.
Email: {mzennaro, ermanno}@ictp.it

ABSTRACT delivered in the developed world and spun out the Cyber-
healthcare field in medicine with positive impacts on patient
This paper proposes and evaluates the performance of a care. Cyber-healthcare aims at enabling Cyber physicians
Cyber-healthcare system which is aimed at providing patient consultation and treatment of patients via the Internet as well
prioritization over the cloud as a public health service for as providing better healthcare management through digiti-
the rural and urban communities of the developing world. zation of all aspects of clinical work: technology, imaging,
The underlying cloud-based Internet-of-Things (IoT-Cloud) medications, surgery, rehabilitation, preventive measures,
infrastructure is aimed to be implemented in the city of
physical therapy, nursing homes, and medical supplies. It
Lubumbashi in the republic Democratic Republic of the
provides new opportunities for enhancing health care in the
Congo (DRC) with the objective of setting up a community
developing world thanks to low acquisition costs and flexible
health care network around a mesh of health kiosks. We pro-
deployment, while improving accuracy by replacing manual
pose a deployment model for the proposed Cyber-healthcare
operations with fully digitized processes.
system, and describe a patient prioritization process as part
The public health sector in both rural and urban settings
of its situation awareness component. The results obtained
of the developing world can leverage the Cyber-healthcare
from an experimental prototype reveal the field readiness
technology to improve health care management and service
of the off-the-shelf bio-sensor technology used by the sys-
delivery. Leapfrogging from poorly prepared to adequately
tem, the performance achieved when using a solar powered
equipped communities, bio-medical researchers in the devel-
subsystem, the relative communication capabilities provided
oping world can also take advantage of the tools provided
by its protocols and the network engineering feasibility of
by these technologies to conduct research and thus reduce
the planned community health care network. The relative
the scientific divide in the medical field. Some of the is-
efficiency of using supervised machine learning compared
sues associated with Cyber-healthcare systems deployments
to unsupervised machine learning when performing patient
include:
prioritization, is also revealed through two popular algo-
rithms: Multivariate linear regression (MLR) and K-means Bio-sensor field readiness. While not aimed at replacing the
clustering (KMC). medical practitioner, a Cyber-healthcare system is assumed
to offer medical decision support by providing accurate and
Keywords— E-health, Cyber-healthcare, Internet-of-Things, calibrated vital sign values and build upon these values to im-
Patient prioritization, Situation recognition plement patient condition recognition and prioritization. The
field readiness of the bio-sensor devices used by the system,
especially when consisting of low-cost off-the-shelf equip-
1. INTRODUCTION
ment, is an important parameter upon which the accuracy of
the system depends.
The recent advances in sensor, actuator, radio frequency
Sensor readings dissemination. In many deployment sce-
identification (RFID), wireless/mobile and cloud comput-
narios, the vital signs captured from patients are routed over
ing technologies have changed the way information is pro-
a network to a processing place where patient’s condition
duced and exchanged between communities. These advances
recognition is achieved. The efficiency of the bio-sensor
combined with the use of artificial intelligence for mining
readings dissemination is another important parameter upon
medical records have revolutionized the way health-care is
which service delivery depends. While ZigBee and WiFi
Thanks to XYZ agency for funding. have been widely used as legacy protocols in the digital
978-92-61-20431-0/CFP1668P-ART © 2016 ITU – 231 – Kaleidoscope